Data Center Architectural and Visual Standards: Facades, Screening, Lighting and Height

A modern data center is a large, mostly windowless building surrounded by equipment yards, generators, a substation and security fencing. For years many counties treated it as ordinary industrial use, with only basic setback and landscaping rules. As campuses grew and moved closer to homes and highways, local governments began adding use-specific standards for appearance. Loudoun County’s 2022 board action, for example, called for zoning standards addressing high-quality building design and proximity to residential uses.¹⁰

Visual standards usually fall into four groups:

• Facade and massing: articulation, materials, colors, entrances and orientation to the road.
• Screening: walls, enclosures, berms and planting that hide equipment, parking, loading and fencing.
• Lighting: fixture shielding, light levels at the property line and color or timing controls.
• Height and bulk: maximum building height, how rooftop equipment is counted and overall size limits.

These sit alongside noise rules and buffers, which are covered in noise, setbacks and buffers, and the broader ordinance structure described in data center zoning ordinances and overlay districts. The Urban Land Institute’s 2024 guidance for local officials, written by its data center product council, includes a model zoning ordinance local governments can adapt.¹¹

Facade rules try to break up long, blank walls. Fairfax County’s September 2024 amendment requires main entrances, facade variations and other architectural elements intended to make data center buildings more visually appealing.¹ Phoenix’s 2025 text amendment proposed enhanced architectural, landscaping and streetscape standards, and reporting on the proposal described decorative features meant to “avoid large, monotonous, undifferentiated surfaces.”¹²¹³

Spotsylvania County, Virginia, is one of the most specific. Its guidelines, adopted February 24, 2026, apply to any facade visible to the public or to nearby sensitive uses and call for:²

• varied building pattern or texture;
• neutral color tones that complement the surrounding area;
• a wall plane projection or recess at least every 100 feet, to produce an active or undulating facade;
• windows, green walls or a combination covering at least 50% of any visible facade.

Orientation matters too. Prince William County’s 2022 working draft of its data center overlay required primary facades to face adjacent roads, kept loading docks and service entries out of view from public rights-of-way, and called for broad architectural gestures to create variety in facade and massing as seen from the road.¹⁴ For design teams, these rules mean the building’s long side, entry and service yard positions are partly set by the code, which affects the campus master plan before any layout is fixed.

Screening is the most common visual requirement because the equipment is what neighbors notice. Before its 2024 amendment, Fairfax required cooling, ventilation and power equipment, including emergency generators, to sit inside an enclosed building, except in the I-4, I-5 and I-6 districts.¹⁵ The amendment now requires all such equipment, in every district that allows data centers, to be enclosed or screened by a wall or similar barrier to reduce visual and noise impacts.¹

Prince William County requires ground-level and rooftop mechanical equipment to be screened from view and bars chain-link and barbed-wire fencing, according to a review of local data center rules by the AI Now Institute.⁶ Spotsylvania’s guidelines ask that ground- and roof-mounted equipment, chain-link fencing and barbed-wire fencing be completely screened from public view, and that generators be enclosed with a sound-dampening barrier.² Phoenix’s amendment extended screening design standards to equipment enclosures and accessory utility facilities such as electrical substations.¹²

Berms and planting do much of the work. Spotsylvania asks for existing forest to be kept and gaps filled with a landscaped berm at least 8 feet tall with slopes no steeper than 25%.² Phoenix, as summarized by AI Now, requires two rows of large canopy shade trees with shrubs and ground cover.⁶ Screening conflicts with security sight lines are discussed in physical security and perimeter design, and equipment yard sizing in cooling plant and equipment yard space.

Many data center buildings are one or two stories, but tall floor-to-floor heights, parapets and rooftop cooling equipment can push the overall height well beyond what a conventional industrial zone expects. Newer ordinances increasingly close that gap by counting rooftop equipment. A March 2026 draft in Franklin County, Indiana, would cap the primary structure, including rooftop parapets, screens and mechanical equipment, at 75 feet.⁴ PennFuture’s model data center ordinance (version 2.0) takes a different approach: a bracketed 45-foot limit for the principal building plus up to 15 additional feet for roof-mounted equipment such as cooling and ventilation systems, HVAC units and cooling towers, with the bracketed figures left for each municipality to set.⁷

Height limits interact with the rest of the site. A lower cap pushes the same floor area into a larger footprint, which affects lot coverage, stormwater and buildable acreage; that trade-off is covered in building footprint, lot coverage and floor area. Height near airports is a separate federal question, and tall exhaust stacks or construction cranes can trigger FAA notice even where local height rules are met; see FAA airspace and height limits.

Size limits are related but distinct. Fairfax kept its by-right size limits in 2024, added one for the I-4 district and required special exception approval for larger projects outside I-5 and I-6.¹ Read the definitions section carefully: whether height is measured to the roof deck, the parapet or the top of equipment can change the allowable design by a full story.

Data center sites are lit for security around the clock, and on rural parcels that light can be the most visible feature at night. Lighting standards in recent data center ordinances follow a consistent pattern. The July 2026 final version of a data center zoning amendment in Dallas Township, Pennsylvania (Ordinance No. 3 of 2026), for example, would require all new and replacement outdoor fixtures to be full cut-off, cap illumination at adjacent residential property lines at 0.5 foot-candles measured at ground level, and subject high-gloss or highly reflective exterior materials to township review.³

The light pollution advocacy group DarkSky International published a statement on data center development on June 4, 2026.⁸ It opposes data centers in naturally dark places, especially where they would threaten International Dark Sky Places, and in developed areas it urges the highest lighting standards rather than opposing the facility.⁸ It notes that data centers often rely on “brute force” security lighting and says light levels should be kept to the minimum necessary, pointing to its own principles and to the IES RP-43-22 standard.⁸

Practical lighting requirements to expect include a photometric plan at the property line, shielded and downward-aimed fixtures, limits on pole height and controls that dim or switch off lights when not needed. Ask the county early whether a dark-sky ordinance or lighting zone already applies, because retrofitting fixtures after site plan approval is far harder than specifying them up front.

Visual standards come in three forms, and the form determines how firm they are.

Henrico County adopted its data center guidelines on June 10, 2025, as an appendix to its comprehensive plan, to be used in evaluating data center proposals; they call for coordinated planning across large parcels to maximize screening along roadways and enhanced buffering, including vegetation and earthen berms, along major roads and shared borders with homes.⁵ Spotsylvania’s standards will be considered for all projects, but project-specific conditions may call for alternatives.²

Guidelines gain force when the use requires discretionary approval. Loudoun County made data centers a special exception use in its industrial districts in March 2025, and Phoenix’s council unanimously adopted its data center code and plan amendments in July 2025.¹⁶⁹ Once a project needs a rezoning or special permit, design guidance tends to become written conditions or proffers. The hearing side of that process is covered in public hearings for data center projects.

Visual standards rarely stop a project on their own, but they add cost, consume land and shape the layout. A short checklist for an early screen:

1. 01Pull the current zoning text and any data center use standards, and check for pending amendments.
2. 02Read the comprehensive plan for data center design guidelines that staff will apply in a rezoning.
3. 03Map sight lines from public roads and nearby homes; these define what must be screened.
4. 04Check height definitions, including how parapets and rooftop equipment are measured.
5. 05Ask whether a lighting ordinance, lighting zone or nearby dark-sky designation applies.
6. 06Budget land for buffers and berms before calculating buildable acreage.

Early renderings and a sight-line study are useful at community meetings, where appearance is often a leading concern. BlackForge includes visual and buffer requirements when it estimates usable land; you can get a site reviewed.